Autumn Conference at Bochum 2004 - Speakers

Marta Gibinska

Short Biography

Marta Gibinska is professor of English literature at the Jagiellonian University, Cracow. She teaches Shakespeare, Renaissance literature, problems of literary translation specifically connected with Shakspeare's drama and poetry. She has published on Shakespeare's language, Shakespeare in Polish translations, on Shakespeare in modern Polish poetry, Shakespeare in Polish theatre, and recently on representation of history in drama. Marta Gibinska is a member of teh Deutsche Shakespeare Gesellschaft ; she has been actively involved in international conferences 'Shakespeare in Europe'.

Speech “Playing History: Creating the Dramatic Moment in Henry IV”

The paper examins the text of the two parts of Henry VI as a dramatic structure which construes fiction which pretends to be history. The questions asked deal with the quality of dramatic narration, i.e. the consequence of the specific mode of time in drama, the mimetic and diegetic modes of representation, as well as with the Aristotelian conceptions of history and poesy. The interpretation stresses possible subversive readings of the lessons history in Shakespeare's drama might teach.

Michael Hattaway

Michael Hattaway

Short Biography

Michael Hattaway is Professor of English Literature at the University of Sheffield. He is the author of Elizabethan Popular Theatre (1982) and Hamlet: The Critics' Debate (1987); is the editor of 1-3 Henry VI (1990-3) and As You Like It (2000) for the New Cambridge Shakespeare, of plays by Jonson and Beaumont for the Revels and New Mermaid series, of A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture, (Oxford, 2000), and The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare's History Plays (2002); is co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Drama (1990 and 2003) and Shakespeare in the New Europe (1994).

Speech “Baffling: Sports of Honour and Dignity in Henry IV”

I shall indicate how Henry IV, like all English Renaissance history plays, for its contemporaries inhabited the same cultural space as sports and games. Specifically, I shall examine the theme of ‘baffling’: the word designates a specific ritualized and sportive humiliation meted out to disgraced members of the nobility. Although the play is thus associated with festivity, it remains deeply political: its mode calls into question the integrity of the honour codes of the nobility as well as the legitimating ideologies by which monarch was maintained.

Speech “From the divine right of kings to parliamentary monarchy”

If teachers are no longer willing to keep to the beaten track an alternative to the well known plays such as Macbeth or Julius Caesar will be proposed here; a play that is not often taught in German classrooms: Henry IV, Part 1, because "there is history, comedy, politics, fantasy - even a touch of romance" as Neil King rather enthusiastically states in Richard Adams' book Teaching Shakespeare, London, 1985. My intention is to give to the teachers a number of suggestions as to what to do with and how to approach this play without being a specialist in English history. There is this 'fat paunch' called Falstaff, the most famous of Shakespeare's characters; there is Hal, this good-for-nothing prince who must follow in his father's footsteps and be the new king. Apart from learning something about the divine right of kings in the late Middle Ages and the futile attempt to topple the usurper Henry Bolingbroke by the Northumberland family, a list of texts as to the development of the English monarchy up to now is added in which we learn more about its power and influence - often exercised behind closed doors. Finally, some films of Henry IV (Part 1 ) available to everybody will be recommended. The lecture in Bochum will be given in English.